ITSM Conference - INNOTRAIN IT

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IT Service Management for SMEs: Challenges and Opportunites

International IT conference has shown the great benefit of IT Service Management for small and medium sized companies

The international IT conference IT Service Management for SMEs: Challenges and Opportunities, that has taken place on the 27^th October 2011 in the city of Debrecen, discussed the great potential of IT Service Management for SMEs but also the specific barriers. IT can be seen as the key driver of innovation for small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs). IT Service Management (ITSM) is nothing more than the reach of the best business performance by cost-effective, measurable and reliable IT solutions. The conference was organized within the project INNOTRAIN IT and was coordinated by the University of Debrecen.

International experts and practitioners exchanged their ITSM experiences and ideas and discussed the current issues regarding innovation and the reduction of IT costs. The international organization itSMF was represented by two keynote speakers, the Hungarian president István Sarkadi-Nagy and by Dierk Söllner from the itSMF Lower Saxony in Germany. They both emphasized the importance of IT Infrastructure Library in a company’s change from an IT provider to a business partner.

“The goal of ITSM is to offer services that are appropriate to the business requirements” said Achilles Georgiu, who works at IBM Hungary Ltd. and who is also teaching at the Central European University Business School. Barna Kiss, who is the Head of the Service Management of IT Services Hungary Ltd. has talked about the key success factors of the practical work with ITSM.The participants of the conference have further learned that SMEs can increase their effectiveness up to 40% by using ITSM. This is one of the results of the INNOTRAIN IT project, that were presented by the project coordinator Kirsten Platz and Prof. Dieter Hertweck – live connected via Skype from Australia

During the afternoon workshops Hungarian, German, Austrian and Polish SMEs have reported about their IT improvements. MFG Public Innovation Agency for ICT and Media from Germany, for example, has started with ITSM by providing external printing services. A second company from Germany namely Dambach Werke GmbH has changed the sales process by using a webshop. ”The introduction was supported by an acceptance survey, in which the customers were asked if they are prepared to order via the website” said the representative of Dambach.

A delegate of BOC Austria has pointed out that “the perception of IT department might be seen in two ways: to see IT only as a cost factor, then it should be outsourced, or to see IT as business generator, then it should be definitely kept in house.” The representative of open Horizon from Poland outlined the running of a multimedia training platform which is a simple and effective tool for training the staff of SMEs.

The audience has also gained an overview of existing ITSM frameworks and new scientific developments, as e.g. the simplified ITSM method developed in the framework of INNOTRAIN IT.

As part of the conference the PhD students of the Faculty of Informatics of the University have presented their diverse research topics and results.

Please watch the TV spot about the conference.

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